Once upon a time, a young quarterback, who just about no one outside of his own locker room had heard of, took over as the starter early in a season that seemed lost and led that team to a Super Bowl victory.

Welcome to Tom Brady’s world, Chad Pennington.

Pennington, the catalyst to yesterday’s playoff-berth-clinching Jets’ victory over the Packers, has been everything to the Jets – a leader, an inspiration and even a Joe Namath-like prophet.

Pennington stood before reporters while the Jets were 2-5 and said, “This is not over. We are going to make the playoffs.”

Curtis Martin remembers the moment and yesterday couldn’t help but smile. He remembered Pennington telling his teammates that the Jets were going to “go 9-0 and make the playoffs.”

“It was almost like watching a little kid that has big dreams and in your mind you say, ‘He doesn’t really know what it takes to get there,’ ” Martin recalled. “But there was something about Chad. He spoke with so much conviction. I think what really helped is we looked at him as that little brother and we wanted to protect him, and that took our game to a whole other level.

“I take my hat off to that guy. He’s come in and has led this team. Chad has been the leader of this team. We didn’t go 9-0, but we made it here.”

Pennington yesterday outshined Brett Favre in a rout and finished his magical regular season with an astounding quarterback rating of 104.2.

His regular season rating bested the Jets’ all-time record of 101.6 by Vinny Testaverde in 1998, when the Jets went to the AFC Championship game.

“[Pennington] was flawless,” Packers’ coach Mike Sherman said. “He made great decisions and had confidence in the pocket. He was accurate. You can’t play much better than he did.”

It’s no accident that Pennington was voted the team’s MVP by his teammates.

“He didn’t try to compete with Brett Favre, he was just Chad Pennington,” Herman Edwards said. “We talked about that all week. All he needed to do was be Chad Pennington and that is good enough.”